Wednesday, 23 May 2012

More Monnet

At the risk of boring you with horreur! these revisionist snippets in relation to Saint Jean Monnet, I promise this is the last. For now. It's from the LSE's excellent collection of papers online, this one by Eric Holm, and worth reading in full for a readable gallop through the failings of the European project from the Saar to Kosovo.

"The French on their side had their own European ambitions. They wanted to become an industrial power on the same level as Britain and at Germany’s expense. De Gaulle had in September 1945 appointed Jean Monnet to head an industrial planning board, the Commissariat du Plan, for the modernisation of France. At the time it was the policy of the allied powers to internationalise the core of industrial Germany, the Ruhr district, and France was the strongest promoter of that idea. However, when the Americans changed their minds and wanted to re-install Germany as an economic power, the French ambition to promote national industrialisation by the resources of Ruhr began to look a little improbable. That was when Monnet showed his genius. If only the coal and steel industries of Germany could become Europeanised and not internationalised – and Britain could be trusted to stay out of such a supranational adventure – then France could control and benefit from such a project and thus achieve its national aims. And that was what happened. Monnet’s idea of a European Coal and Steel Community, controlled by a non-political supranational High Authority, proved to be the perfect fit for both French and American desires. Only a Frenchman could become president of the High Authority – Jean Monnet himself"